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It's been a season of multiple changes which I have been personally interpreting as my cues to finally call it quits in Hawaii: everything from a ''yes'' on the rail transit plan (with associated tax increases) and the Hawaii Supreme Court shutdown of the inter-island ferry and the continually push to ram 'homo-marriage' down our throats disguised behind ''newspeak'' terminology, to even a tornado touchdown here on Island (Feb. 11 over in Kapolei at one of the seemingly several thousand golf courses here in the islands). What ultimately triggered it for me however was the edict which was handed down from the ''non-resident'' manager (still no replacement for Calvin, who got spit-canned, re: Nov. 26) ordering those of us with motorcycles to have them removed from the courtyard where we had for years been allowed to park them and to have these removals done by a certain date. Also what has prompted me to perceive these sequential events as my being 'pushed out' occurred just several days into this month (March) when I went to the property management office window with my rent payment and was informed that yet again, beginning in April, they would no longer be taking on-the-spot rent payments and would be ''requiring'' us to mail in payments again (so my payments can get lost in the mail again, so they can try to penalize me again, so they can sic one of their pit bull attorneys on me again, so I can once again be sent through all sorts of stresses and anguish due to somebody else's mishandling of my documents!). I've also been contacted by the telephone company now informing that the ''package deal'' I'd signed up for was part of a ''promotional offer'' which was now expiring.
I'd also effectively given up on attempting any sort of ''get togethers'' (solid or fling) via ''Craig's List'' (or any other service, for that matter) about a week or so after my first and only date with ''Jessica'' (she said she was no longer in the islands and was uncertain when or if she'd ever return; we exchanged a few extra emails before I'd stopped hearing from her altogether).
As part of my preparation I've been working somewhat tirelessly editing my few remaining audio files (mostly some of my most recently downloaded radio dramas, but also some newly downloaded or recorded music) along with ''photoshopping'' a huge assortment of images I'd compiled & selected for my desktop themes and 'screensaver' images, so I can try to hurry up and back everything onto disk so I can do a final scrub of all of my systems (I have since conducted a full scrub of the ''G3 iMac'' I had rescued from its scheduled trip to the dump when I was working on the Kapiolani Community College campus). I'd also taken my old jade jellybean ''iMac DV'' to my jobsite over the course of several weekends in order to get some of that work done, since working this 5-day work week interferes with my ability to spend the amount of time I'd normally immerse myself into.
One thing which has been helping me to ''catch up'' somewhat is the election of Barack Obama. With ''Baby Doc'' Bush and his soulless cabal out of supreme power (still to a certain degree of my genuine amazement that he & his gang of thugs never attempted a ''national emergency'' type of suspension of the election) I find myself with much-much less to ''obsess'' over, though the Repugnantcans are far from letting up with their lies, deceits, treacheries and obstructionist behavior.
And finally... ''Papa John's'' too has now lost my regular pizza business. This occurred the first Monday of this month when I was informed that ''PJ's'' was now tacking on an additional DOLLAR for anyone who submitted a personal check for payment. I was told that the practice had already been in place for about a month or so when I called in that day, but apparently the persons who had taken my orders in the past either decided to waive the charge on my behalf in consideration of my frequent business or they had simply overlooked that this my normal method of payment. Although it was a waste of breath to complain about a policy that was certain never to revert back anyway, I did call the ''customer service'' number and expressed to them that because of this policy I would no longer be patronizing any of their shops, just as I had also done, as I explained to their voicemail, with ''Domino's Pizza'' prior to my taking my business to ''Papa's.'' Now there's nobody... not that it's any major worry to my life -- pizza is expensive and the one 'luxury', if you will, that I would routinely allow myself; with that out of the way (since ''Pizza Hut'' is definitely out of the question) I can use that money to help boost my checking account, or at least help pay for regular groceries which are getting ridiculously astronomically expensive.
Unmentioned Highlights From Previous Quarter
March 28, 2009 (Saturday)
Multiple gunshots rang out this morning just before a quarter 'til four, which sounded as if they were coming from just outside of my workplace across the street (Beretania), but I saw nothing, and the few people I'd seen out & about didn't seem at all phased by what they had heard (wot da 'el izdiss, New Yark?). As the police arrived (very-very quickly, what a surprise) they proceeded to cut off two complete blocks, from Beretania to Hotel Streets north-south, and one full block from River Street to Maunakea Street east-west. It became evident that the incident (which sounded to me at the time like it may have been an exchange of gunfire) occurred about midway along Pauahi Street -- the next block over from my place of work and slightly further than half-a-block away from my place of residence. They still had their originally blocked off length of River Street cordoned off by the time I'd gotten off work several hours later, but had moved the crime scene tape down to the mid-point of Pauahi. Upon checking online for any of the latest information on the incident I found one news source which states that there was only a single victim, shot in the back with a rifle and shotgun being used (I had assumed that handguns had been used), and that it was reported as a sort of a ''driveby'' type of hit where two men had reportedly exited a vehicle, took out whomever (still as of yet unidentified), got back into their vehicle and sped away. Taking the location of the incident into consideration and the type of put-down that took place, there's almost no doubt in my mind that the whole thing went down as the result of some dope deal that went bad.
16:55, Hawaii Standard Time.
March 31, 2009 (Tuesday)
For the last couple of days folks have been ''memorializing'' the the corner of River and Pauahi Streets-- near the spot where Saturday morning's victim was gunned down and killed --as though the victim were some sort of kindly saint, as if he were just some innocent bystander who'd happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. But as I've said, I live this area, I know this area, and I know the kind of late-night/early-morning crowds that establish their presence here. So here now is the updated story on this ''fine citizen'' so many are mourning with their cornerside memorial:
''Chinatown Murder Suspect in Police Custody
Sources say Saturday's killing in Chinatown may be a battle between two groups vying for control over the drug and gambling activities in that area.
The medical examiner has confirmed the man shot to death in Chinatown early Saturday morning was 35-year-old Joseph Peneueta, a convicted felon with a history of dealing drugs. [emphases mine] Police say he was gunned down by two men firing assault rifles. A third man drove a getaway car that was later found burned and abandoned.
Then, late Monday afternoon, drug enforcement authorities arrested Iosefa Pasene on Lipoa place in Aiea. He was handed over to Honolulu police and escorted into the cell block.
The DEA picked him up on an offense that's unrelated to the Chinatown shooting case. He was later booked at HPD on a count of second-degree murder.
We've also learned Honolulu police may be looking for a fourth suspect. All the suspects have mainland addresses but may be residents of Hawaii. Sources say, three of them had plans to board a plane for San Francisco the day of the shooting. Police are also checking for a link between the shooting and some arrests made the day before. On Friday, three men were picked up [at] Aala Park on drug offenses and all three were out on bail at the time of the murder.
One of those men was Iosefa Pasene, the same man federal agents arrested today.''
* Update - (21:50):
Afterwards I went to the telephone company to get extended on the call/internet plan which had expired because I was never informed when I adopted it that it was part of a ''promotional'' package and not a permanent residential plan.
I then continued on to ''KMart'' to complete the bits of shopping I hadn't completed from last night, only to have them try to give me some bogus horse dung about not being able to accept personal checks with no ''physical'' addresses listed. (...And as if there were not enough going on to out there to insult our intelligence, I was introduced to another blatant example of ''newspeak'' when I noticed that chewable ''children's'' aspirin-- including that old trusted 'industry standard', ''St. Joseph's Aspirin for Children'' --is now relabeling itself as ''Adult Low Dose'' -- only ''Bayer'' brand, which describes their product further down the package as ''Low Dose 'Baby' Aspirin'' [sic], had enough decency not to bullshit its consumers by packaging it simply as ''chewable'' aspirin.)
02:55, Hawaii Standard Time.
(from local CBS television affiliate KGMB - channel 9)
'Nuff sed, as far as I'm concerned.
Written by Tina Chau - tchau@kgmb9.com
March 30, 2009 11:01 PM
Decided to beat these property managers to the punch by submitting a rent check ''pre-deadline'' of their April 1st decision to yet again discontinue accepting payments that are not ''mailed in.'' However, instead of simply submitting April's payment a day early simply to beat their deadline I submitted not only the rent total for the month of April but also included an advance amount to cover the following three months, so that I will not have to deal with their ''bee-ess'' for at least that long while I try to figure out what exactly what I'm going to be doing between all that time.
April 3, 2009 (Friday)
Learned this morning from a couple of the residents that we've finally gotten a resident manager for the establishment here: I've yet to meet him. No way of knowing yet just how involved he'll be in setting/executing policy, though it is not likely to matter much in my case; I'm just hoping that that needed repairs & improvements can finally get jumpstarted again, because this facility is going down a fast spiral.
I also spent an infuriating amount of time attempting to establish a new ''YouTube'' persona now that I seem to be moving much closer to actually wanting to start participating beyond viewing & text commenting. The set-up headache came from attempting to correct a grave error in my rush to register when I supplied an incorrect associate email address: I had absentmindedly submitted my intended email username as ''@gmail.com'' (Google) (which was an email name registered to someone else) rather than as ''@ymail.com'' (Yahoo!) (which was my account). Thanks to ''YouTube/Google'' and their so-called ''help'' I was literally running around in circles all over their webpages in an attempt to find out how or if I could retain the username I had carefully picked for myself and resubmit the correct email addy, winding up nowhere and with nothing but a clever-ass ''user name'' which is now going to be used by the owner of the ''gmail'' address I'd accidentally registered with (...assuming he chose the same ''email name'' in question for the same reason I did). Later, I then decided on an entirely new ''YouTube'' username, registered it, thought up what I thought was an even better one almost immediately afterward, then spent almost the next hour trying to confirm the stinking new accounts in an attempt to switch out the email accounts so that the original email address I'd originally intended to register with could be reassociated with the final 'YouTube' username I'd selected: the problem seemed to be tied up with ''Macintrash,'' regardless of which web browser I tried to use, so I finally had to get the mess cleared up in my saving-grace ''Windows'' OS, of course....
20:00, Hawaii Standard Time.
April 11, 2009 (Saturday)
Was greeted last night with my secondary bicycle missing from its normal space where I've positioned it, so my initial suspicion was that someone had carried it off (it was not locked down, only a cable was looped and secured through the wheels & frame). I also found that my motorcycle was now resting upon its ''side kickstand'' rather than on the center stand as I normally park it; I also noted that my motorcycle cover had been tampered with and newly ripped in several spots -- it was soon discovered that this was the result of the cover having been completely removed and replaced in the wrong direction after an attempt had been made to move or remove the cycle. I only noticed these things because I'd made the decision to take the spare iMac to work with me again to work on my last round of file adjustments & repairs in advance of my scrubbing all of my systems and reloading everything afresh. I was unable to determine who was responsible for these violations, though my suspicion is that the new resident manager, whom I have not yet met, was probably the culprit. In any case, my response to it this morning was to resort back to fully locking down my motorcycle and cover as had been my habit when I purchased the stuff brand new; I also secured the bicycle to the motorcycle kickstand to prevent its removal again.
A bigger scare I had prior to leaving the apartment at that same time was my inability to locate my wallet, and hence my driver's license, and I knew full well that I had placed it in the front compartment of my backpack. It turned out when I got to work that it had fallen out of my pack when it had fallen from the chair earlier that morning. My irritation came when it was explained to me that when the shift change came, the person who relieved me for the day took the wallet out of the office, gave it to the parking garage attendant who, in turn, gave it back to office personnel on the following workshift, rather than simply looking in the wallet, checking the identification, and just leaving it in the office with a note or something, rather than playing ''musical-[f*cking]-chairs'' with the blamed thing!
Finally took some time out this evening to try sorting out some paperwork so I could have everything in order when I start to do my taxes, but mainly so I could locate a paycheck I had misplaced somewhere.
22:10, Hawaii Standard Time.
April 13 - 17, 2009 (Monday-Friday)
Despite still having so much that needed to get done I still delayed on most of it, doing little tiny bits here & about.
I did manage to break rank much earlier than expected by struggling to post my very first ''YouTube'' video Tuesday, even as ill prepared as I was, in response to my having been highly affected by a video post which showed some of the worst case examples of ''proud'' African-Americans in action at what the poster of the video claimed was taking place at a ''family day'' event honoring Martin Luther King, Jr. on his holiday. I had to express why all of the embarrassing & humiliating displays (especially of the less-than half-dressed black women shaking & exposing their asses), along with the soundtrack he used of some of the most vile hip-hop ''songs'' I've ever heard (if they can even be called "songs"), served only as another nail in the coffin as to why I try to totally distance myself from anything associated with the ''Black Community,'' despite being half-black myself. But this cheapie-assed webcam software is set up to automatically block out audio recording when switching back over into 'stop video recording' mode despite the fact that the user may sometimes want to continue recording audio even after shutting off the video portion of the recording process, along with its difficulty in navigating/shuffling through "window shade" images.
My ''follow-up'' video postings likewise came much earlier than anticipated on Wednesday when I produced a gripe video complaining first about this particular thing which has been putting a bug up my arse for so very long, i.e., how people in this apartment complex overwhelmingly make the decision to walk directly in my path as I'm wheeling the motorcycle in/out through our street entrance/courtyard access corridor DESPITE the fact that I'll be hugging close to the wall and leaving them with more than enough room to walk through without the slightest difficulty.
This video foot-stomp, however, was followed up later in the same night when I'd decided to discuss something that had occurred earlier in the afternoon as I approached the post office with my Federal tax return (short of the single penny I needed for a one-cent stamp that was required to make the right amount of postage). There were a couple of younger Caucasian persons, one male, the other female, very nice looking, standing in front of the mauka-facing steps handing out fliers which purported to be something about ''fair taxes'' or some such. I explained to them that unless what they were proposing as ''fair taxation'' meant that not only would the tax rate for the wealthiest earners be allowed to return to their ''Clinton-era'' levels but actually increased even further in order to relieve the burden off of the lower and working classes who disproportionately have to shoulder much of the tax burden, then I wouldn't be interested in some reactionary ''Don't Raise 'MY' Taxes'' mantra when the facts were that the proposed tax rate increases would affect only those pulling in a quarter of a million dollars per year and above. I'm not sure if it was because of the way I was articulating the point or if by my explanation they perceived I was someone who'd be ''in ''their'' camp, but they eventually revealed their real agenda, which had something to do with fairness/equality for homosexual ''families'' (...the buttons they were wearing with a little pink heart beneath with the word ''equality'' probably should have been the tip-off; I didn't see the ''rainbow'' signs lying on the grass behind the tabloid racks until later). So again I had to go into explanation that I did not support homosexual marriage in large part because it would take western society's ''common'' interpretation & definition of the word ''marriage'' and turn it into a ''legal'' headache where eventually, especially if ''Latter-Day Saints'' (''Mormons'') and immigrants from ''Islamic'' nations, both of which allow for ''polygamy'' as part of their religious philosophies, ''marriage'' would have to be defined ''constitutionally'' and ultimately through the Supreme Court before the fight would reach its vitriolic and undesirable conclusion. (After the discussion, I did manage to beg the penny I'd needed from the young man there.) In any event, despite that the conversation was respectful and disagreeing without being disagreeable, I felt a need to let out my frustrations about the deceptive hooks their and other groups-- politically ''Left'' and ''Right'' --frequently use in order to either sway public opinion or to get somebody to 'sign off' on something they might not if having been given up-front honest information about what their real agenda were, hence the follow-up video posting. (I was dissatisfied with the initial result, as speaking extemporaneously to/though a machine makes it difficult for me to speak fluidly or to organize my thoughts without becoming distracted and losing track of them, so I conducted a ''reshoot'' on the subject the following night, still dissatisfied with the result.)
At the jobsite Thursday night I found where somebody had left a fresh 5-pound package of locally-grown mung sprouts and a bag of about two-dozen green bell peppers in the backflow main planter box in front of Won Kee Chinese restaurant (not sure if there was a connection) which continued to sit unclaimed throughout the workshift, so toward the end I brought them into the office and brought them home.
''Week in Review''
April 20 - 24, 2009 (Monday-Friday)
Monday saw me working an hour and a half past my clock-out time, which really came as not that much of a surprise to me, considering that I had planned on using my extra time to try making my "Spring Day" deadline for getting all of my files situated so I could FINALLY get around to scrubbing my systems. But because of my new involvement with ''YouTube'' I have been getting pushed aside a bit, so I've now set as my new target date "1st Spring Weekend."
Part of what kept me hanging on, besides webcam splash page refinements and trying to track down & edit images for future webcam projects, was my video response to some blogger douchbag who goes by the pseudonym ''Perez Hilton,'' who got bitchslapped by the ''Miss USA'' contestant from California who hit his arrogant ass with a gut-punching dose of reality when she revealed that not everyone in this country can be manipulated into abdicating their moral principles for the sake of being perceived as ''politically correct'' when it involves the issue of homosexual marriage... and because she refused to take the bait he hauled off on her in a personal attack in his video blog, which reaction got covered in that morning's news.
We all had to attend a mandatory meeting on Wednesday to discuss some adjustments to our job duties and to address concerns about the workplace. I had initially intended to just remain quiet about the whole thing, as irritating & frustrating as it's always been to deal with, because I figured with the way things seemingly were ''allowed'' to operate that there would be no reason to expect any change... until one of the other co-workers (our newest member) brought the issue up (which involved the daily instances of ''unauthorized access'' to the plaza grounds) and it was revealed by the plaza manager attending the meeting that such activity should never have been allowed to begin with and that the common sense policy of no access without legitimate authorization should be enforced -- with police intervention, if necessary.
The clarification regarding ''unauthorized access'' gave me a renewed sense of purpose & commitment to the job as well as a long-forgotten feeling of responsibility & importance (the mention earlier in the day during the meeting of a pay raise & pseudo 'promotion' offer truly played very little role in what I could describe when I return to work later as near euphoria). But that newfound authority would be put to the test Thursday when, after everything seemed to be going very smoothly for the most part, a couple of women Bogarted their way past without regard for the fact that I'd be calling police to have them removed from premises. Good or Bad, and for whomever's benefit, the dispatched police decided to play clueless and never met up with me at the designated location, so the two women managed to spend their time inside and leave before I could successfully get anyone to show up at all, even after a follow-up call. Before returning to work for my next shift I scoured the Internet to find ''Kanji'' phrases to make a warning sign to express what I had written in English & posted on the main door they weasel their way through every day. I was relieved that I had less of a confrontational situation this second time than I did earlier, but I'm almost counting on them trying to run roughshod over the new girl who's only been with us two weeks, so I'll be passing along specific instructions to her to follow during the days that I'm not scheduled to work.
Coming back from work today also had another surprise waiting for me: I had not realized it the last time I tried a few days ago, mainly because I was too impatient to take notice, but the main buildings' access doors (inside the courtyard) had had their locks changed, so that now the key I've been holding on to for all this time is now useless. Fortunately (although it's a lapse in building security) I can still avoid ''Big Brother'' to a significant degree by accessing my building through a malfunctioning automatic door.
In other news, Darrin, the homeless man everyone refers to as ''Banzai,'' who had been conspicuously absent for the past several weeks, giving me a much appreciated breather, has been seen back in the area these past couple of nights, but so far he seems ''right'' in the head and has yet to cause any more grief.
''Week in Review''
April 25 - 26, 2009 (Saturday-Sunday)
The "good feelings" I'd had because of the new 'seriousness' I thought was being restored to my job was short lived and came with a couple of prices in misery ducats.
The first letdown came Saturday when I was approached at work by my scheduling manager, the 'notice signs' I had written & posted up in his hand, and berated me for trying to make my job a bit easier by letting the daily violators know that the rules had been restored (the only ''change'' being that they could no longer freely flaunt them). He told me that management of the property was extremely offended, especially by the Cantonese script, making some undoubtedly bogus claim that the ''dialect'' the message was written in-- which I'd copied 'character-for-character' from two separate websites affirming that what I wrote was both accurate and in the correct dialect (Cantonese) --made it offensive. (I personally believe what made it offensive is that somebody actually had the ''pair'' to let the cheaters know upfront that the gig was up.)
When I'd gotten back to the apartment complex one of the neighbors on my floor alerted me to the fact that on the previous morning (Friday) the jerkwad who's always tossing his food and other messes on the adjoining rooftop or down in the bay area where I keep my motorcycle parked had been up on the aforementioned rooftop tossing all sorts of items from it into the area where I keep my motorcycle, leaving what I was told a deep pile of rubbish of various items (including bricks and huge chunks of metal that looked like old machine parts). Because of its enormity, she suggested that I have a look at my motorcycle to see what if any damage had been done to it. I obviously was not pleased with what I saw: the windshield was seriously scuffed and its housing was busted, both needing to be replaced. The dashboard and the keyhole/fluid housing panel were also dislodged and damaged, but I don't believe to such a point where they'll actually be in need of replacement. But even all that did not upset me quite as much as the fact that when I went to use my digicam for the first official time in order to take snapshots of the damage and the surrounding areas only to learn that the thing only allowed me nine pictures total and that I actually needed to purchase a separate memory card in order to arrive at the same numbers as the identical model of camera we use at my job.
Later Saturday night I tried to inform the apartment complex's security guard on duty of the damage that had been done to my property and it degraded into an argument over his repeatedly saying that he knew about all the rubbish in the area, which was not the issue I was raising, and when I finally did get him on track about the damage to my vehicle he kept going off on why I had not reported it the day it had happened, not listening to me telling him repeatedly that I had only found out about ANY of it only the next day AFTER it had already happened & had been mostly cleaned up. It finally took the support of another neighbor from the building opposite mine before we finally managed to go into the details of the ''who'' and the ''what''. He had finally gone up to the man's apartment after I had told him I knew who was responsible, confirmed by the helpful neighbor, gotten his identification and, I suppose, filled out a report on the damage that was caused. (It also turned out that the man in question is not the one whom I'd thought it was, but even that only time I'd actually ever ''seen'' him was really little more than just the top of his bald head.)
Decided to do some grocery shopping before going into work Sunday, mainly so I could use the ''$10 off'' coupon which was due to expire Monday.
''Weekend in Review''
April 27 - May 1, 2009 (Monday-Friday)
Scavenged what I could of the rapidly wilting mung sprouts Monday morning and combined them with the giant tub of won bok kim chee I'd purchased Sunday, adding a heavy dose of extra spices to the mix (store-bought stuff's too weak and too salty for my tastes) along with some red wine vinegar.
I then informed the resident manager of the damage to the motorcycle and explained how incidents similar to this are common with the man responsible, expressing my frustrations that I'd hope ''something''-- perhaps like ''eviction'' --could be done in response to these latest violations, since I can say with almost absolute certainty that there is most likely no way I could ever collect from the prick to cover any, let alone all, of the damages he'd caused. I told the manager that I'd take the vehicle into the shop Tuesday for a repair estimate, since the establishment is not open on Mondays, but I had gone without sleep all day Monday into Tuesday morning that I'd slept pretty much the entire day Tuesday, so I got it taken care of Wednesday morning -- the repair ''estimate'' was totaled (minimum, of course) at almost $600.
Tracking down & editing images for my planned ''YouTube'' videos has been playing a large role in keeping me from doing my back-ups & scrubs, but I'm close... I'm very, very close. Also decided to go to the ''help'' section and found out why ''Opera'' browser in ''Mac'' has been acting such a pain in the posterior, so I managed to correct the problem, which may possibly now lead me back into selecting it as my default browser, despite how difficult & frustrating it can be to use, but I'm still not quite getting along with ''Firefox'' as much as I would appreciate.
''Week in Review''
May 2 - 3, 2009 (Saturday-Sunday)
One of the monsters I'd created came back to haunt me at work Saturday when I came across the homeless, drug-fried prostituting haole woman named Jackie wandering through the plaza. She had dyed her hair blond since the last time I'd seen her some months back, and her face looked like she had been overexposed in the sun. She also looked & sounded more ''out of it'' than usual. My first response was relief when she seemed to be following me back outside onto the street where I was already heading, but then insisted calling me back in, going on about wanting to show me that a ''flower'' was growing in her vagina, sounding very detached but serious. I figured it was her way of trying to get me to let her into the restroom, but I figured that if I'd let her in it'd get her out of my hair that much sooner, plus I'd get the tiny perk of getting a small peek at a live vulva. But rather than peeing, or anything else bodily functional, she proceeded to scrape crystal meth residue from the sides of a length of tube, all the while gabbing inconsistently about a variety of topics, some of which I had no clue what the hell she was talking about, although it seemed to all make perfect logical sense to her drug addled brain. Through it all she described a variety of issues relating to her recent experiences, including having gotten kicked out of the homeless shelter for getting confrontational with one of the directors, getting beat up yet again by another rival, and having just made $60 by allowing some man to do her 'anally'. Also from the conversation she seemed to understand what was going on with her, that the drugs were messing up her mind (literally) and that she acknowledged that she was schizophrenic, and she seemed to be making that connection herself. I never got to see any pussy, but during all of rambling, which seemed important to her somehow that I was actually there to listen to her, she insisted that I take five dollars in single bills she was trying to hand to me.
Sunday had me up all day working on putting my finishing touches on my latest, and to date most involved, YouTube video commentary, which got disrupted early in the morning with the sounds of my neighbor Carolyn hollering desperately from down in the stairwell for someone to back off of her and to quit harassing her. When the activity reached our floor level she shouted several times for someone to call the police, at which time I stuck my head outside into the hallway to find out what exactly was going on, at which time I watched as Carolyn was backing away from out of the stairway into the hallway, flailing her arms at a man whom I had never seen before who kept advancing toward her maliciously. It was during this time when they'd both entered the hallway that I witnessed the man, whom as I learned later was the brother of my next door neighbor makai, haul off and punch her hard in the face. How much more he would've done had I not been there to observe the situation I cannot say, but he walked right past me on his way back outside via the far end stairwell. I went back inside, threw some clothes on my naked ass, then tried to track down Carolyn to see if she still wanted me to call police, but when I caught up with her she was already on the public phone downstairs making the call. I then alerted the resident manager of the situation before returning to the apartment to get my identification to have on hand for when the police arrived. As I waited and watched at the street entrance for police to arrive, the assailant and another man, whom it turned out was a second brother whom Carolyn had gotten a restraining order put out on, began verbally harassing me from the opposite side of the street and making threatening innuendoes, at one point one of the pair began coming toward us as Carolyn grabbed my arm and coaxed be back into the doorway, all the while the man launching his verbal assault and displaying threatening behavior. When the police finally arrived I witnessed why Carolyn claimed she was always frustrated with them whenever she tried to give them her statement, they seemed to me almost disinterested, and she was only getting more distraught, which seemed perfectly understandable to me. I had also observed why it's been so difficult for her to get her version of events taken seriously: it seems (based upon what I'd witnessed for myself on this day) that whenever are called to get involved in their disputes that the brothers go into collaboration mode and spin their version of events in an attempt to make Carolyn come out looking like the bad guy -- unfortunately for them this time she had an eyewitness account to back-up her version of events.
As all of this was going on, Gloria, my next door neighbor whose brothers these two men were, got upset at Carolyn and myself for 'having a problem' with her brother, then went into throwing her own spin onto me, the police, and the resident manager of how Carolyn's the one who's always making noises (which I find most curious, especially since most of my own complaints about excessive noise are those which are primarily associated with her own apartment) and how she's always doing drugs and bringing drug addicts into her unit (none of which I've ever seen, heard, smelled, or even suspected evidence of).
I basically ended my whole involvement once I'd submitted my police statement (the process of which was deemed too slow for the officer, since he kept interrupting me asking me if I was ''almost finished'' and saying repeatedly that I really needed to ''hurry it up''), but I couldn't avoid running across Gloria in the hallway as I was intending on checking back up on Carolyn when I'd heard her return to her apartment. Gloria confronted me and seemed very apologetic; I explained that I did nothing out of prejudice or maliciousness but that I had to report on all that I saw and heard, and in our long conversation I explained that regardless of whatever disagreements & difficulties they may exist, and despite whatever accusations they may make, the bottom line was that her brother physically assaulted another person and that everything that followed (police involvement, trespass writs from the resident manager, etc.) could have all been prevented if her brothers had used a little sense and simply avoided the woman altogether.
Getting back to working on my ''vid-mentary'' (video commentary), I'd finally gotten all of my photo & textual edits out of the way and began going through the recording process. Despite the fact that I was largely working from a ''script,'' I kept stumbling through it all so badly (mainly from trying to coordinate my reading/exposition with clicking through my collection of image files to be used) that it was already getting dark by the time I had recorded, re-recorded, and re-re-re-re-re-re-recorded something I could feel somewhat slightly comfortable enough to submit. It had turned out not at all anything like I had envisioned. And I swear, the dog-awful popping sounds which emanate from out of my system through my speakers has so sworn me off of wanting ever to again consider a ''Windows'' based system... or at least another ''Hewlett Packard'' model.
''Weekend in Review''
May 13, 2009 (Wednesday)
Spent all of last night well into sunrise this morning trying to record & upload my latest ''YouTube,'' but I kept getting bitchslapped around by that piece-of-$#!T webcam software program which accounted for about 80% of my difficulties... and this was to be my most involved video commentary to date. I finally reached a seriously pissed breaking point and decided to hammer out the entire project in snippets then see if I could paste it all together in the film-editing program, only to discover that this software doesn't exactly work to logic either. I attempted a number of tricks, including trying to use a conversion program which went from nowhere to absolutely nowhere when I tried to save & upload. Eventually, I figured out that I could eat up some precious disk space and burn the entire project to hard disk as a ''Video TS'' folder and just snag the largest ''.vob'' file and upload it... the upload was slow as stink, and I hated being put through all of the extra steps, but at least it did work in the end. After that, supplying ''annotations'' with it (transcribing the testy back-&-forth between Kierra Bell, an 8th grade school girl, and Congressman Conyers' annoying wife) took even longer, due to trying to time their positions in sync with their exchanges.
And, sadly, I just found out that my girl, Randi Rhodes, made her triumphant return to the airwaves already, and has been back since Monday (I had mistakenly believed that her return was not scheduled until tomorrow, the 14th).
22:20, Hawaii Standard Time.
May 23, 2009 (Saturday)
Went out early this morning to do some grocery shopping, primarily for a 12-pack of bottled beer ''Heineken'' (ended up purchasing two of them, along with a ''Bartles & James'' 4-pack) and a small watermelon, which were on sale at ''Foodland'' for less than a quarter per pound... checking first at ''Safeway'' just in case they were offering any better deals, and in this rare instance they were not, although I did make a return trip afterwards to grab a number of items with them as well, especially since my reserves were running pretty low. In a rare twist, I went on a miniature crazed shopping spree, doing a lot of impulse buying, though most items were still [quote/unquote] ''on sale'' and still for the most part things that constitute my more-or-less ''regular'' purchases. The most unexpected purchase I almost made was a live Maine lobster from my first stop, for close to $22, price by weight -- but once I had the poor doomed creature in my basket I then noticed that frozen Honduras lobster tails were on sale for $8 each, so I returned the live one to the tank to live a little longer and purchased three of the already dead frozen jobs instead. Another huge drain was the purchase of some non-sale pastries and what was left (5 total) of a supply of ''Amy's'' Pesto Pizza (normally around $15, sale price $11 -- still two dollars higher than the lowest sale price it's been when I first tried it). Between the two shopping excursions I spent well over $120 each location -- I've NEVER spent that much money grocery shopping... at least not in a single trip! (B.T.W., not finding my ''Morningstar Farms'' soy ''corn dogs'' in stock I settled instead for a couple of packages of plain ''soy dogs'' and a couple of packages of buns, then learned the embarrassing lesson that they do not 'cook' the same as your typical ''mystery meat'' dogs.
18:35, Hawaii Standard Time.
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